alt Hacker NewsI don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. I think they have the moral obligation and means to create safer spaces- either inside or seperate from their adult platforms; they can reduce or prevent the types of harms when children are exposed to this type of content.
Whether this approach is the best one, or even worth it as it is written in law is definitely something you can argue, but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe), just isn't true. I know not everyone that says this always has good intentions, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing harm upon them.
If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. We haven’t changed much in that regard, but now people wear seatbelts, children can’t buy cigarettes as easily as they used to, and drink-driving rates have fallen. I think these are noble goals.
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> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
I hope we can agree that allowing every social media site to devolve into the above is the bigger problem. There can be some places that are adults-only; just like reality though, the world is better when open-by-default, with some places gated to adults-only.
Shifting focus to "Why are we letting some of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen get away with being a cesspit?" lets us keep kids safe by default, doesn't attack E2EE, and doesn't default to the internet becoming a surveillance state.
If we start by getting Facebook and Twitter (et al.) to clean up their acts, we can all work, yell, and vote together, instead of some yelling about their kids being shown unexpected pornography, and others yelling about the internet becoming a surveillance state.
Because both can be real concerns - but a starter solution can get the vast majority of voters on-board, and garner real progress, instead of giving Facebook more data and control, or governments a turn-key dictatorship.
>I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
The law could instead prohibit scams and violence?
>These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.
Irrelevant.
>but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe)
Almost every other avenue, including doing nothing, has more merit than that which has been implemented.
>If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.
Theres some basic negative freedom implications from those, but they dont intend to ban a class of person from accessing a mundane element of human society.
> These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year.
From their users in Australia? Clearly not.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation
Why not? Why won't you give political agency to young adults? I'm saying this as a kid who grew up in Romania, just after Ceausescu had been executed, so throughout the '90s, I do very well remember all the political news and commentary coming my way (I was a teen), but I can't say that it bothered, not at all, it made me more connected to the adult world and hence more prepared to tackle real life just a little bit later on.
I won't comment on the other stuff, because that would make me bring back memories of watching TV1000 (a Swedish TV satellite channel) late at night on Saturdays, also in the early '90s, I won't say for what but suffice is to say that I turned out ok.
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc.
You mean like the outside world?
What happens when these hot house flowers of yours reach whatever magic age and get dumped into all of that, still with no clue, but with more responsibilities and more to lose?
I haven't noticed a whole lot of governments, or even very many parents, worrying about doing much to actually prepare anybody for adulthood. It's always about protection, never about helping them become competent, independent human beings. Probably because protection is set-and-forget, or at least they think it is... whereas preparation requires actually spending time, and paying attention, and thinking, and communicating. Maybe even having to answer hard questions about your own ideas.
... and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".
yeah social media is proving itself to be a bad actor like big alcohol, big tobacco. No incentive to do the right thing or improve anything. ripping audiences away from them is the only way they'll understand.
>If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar.
If you think the arguments are eerily similar, I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.
I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.
If we are so concerned about the materials make the platforms moderate them like they used to do. Banning them reeks of favoring the murdoch outlets which are free to spread misinformation
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified.
This may be true but it has nothing to do with what the person you are replying to said.
The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.